View/Open

Date

Author

Metadata

Abstract

Governmental mandates and public awareness have forced progressively smaller and less
sophisticated agencies and organizations to initiate stream monitoring programs, particularly in
urban and urbanizing areas. Yet many of these monitoring efforts lack either a coherent
conceptual framework or appropriately chosen methods, and they rely on monitoring techniques
that are simply infeasible for these institutional settings. We identify a monitoring strategy, and
specific existing monitoring protocols, that will be useful for the management and rehabilitation of
streams in urbanizing watersheds.
A monitoring strategy must be developed by 1) identifying the management question(s) being
addressed, 2) determining the institutional level of effort required (and available) to make
particular kinds of measurements effectively, and 3) identifying what specific parameters should
and can be measured. Only a limited set of parameters show much utility or feasibility in
addressing the most common management questions being faced by municipalities in urbanizing,
humid-area regions of the United States. These include measures of riparian canopy, bank
erosion and bank hardening, and in-stream large woody debris. With some additional expertise
useful data can also be included on channel gradient, substrate composition, and pools. Nearly all
of the other myriad physical parameters that have historically been measured on rivers and streams
show little apparent value in these watershed and institutional settings.